Last week, Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee gave the market a big boost when they unveiled another round of economic stimulus. Even though most economists don’t expect the Fed’s actions will do much to boost the struggling economy, the Dow jumped more than 200 points.

Now it’s Apple’s turn. It can’t offer the same sort of broad-based stimulus, but even last week some of the money managers I spoke with were joking that Apple may have done more to prop up the market in recent months than the Fed. Apple, after all, is now the most valuable U.S. company of all time, and a major product announcement is enough to move the entire market.

The problem for investors, though, is that Apple is something of an anomaly among big U.S. companies. While Apple is still posting strong sales and profits, many other companies have seen revenue slow or even decline. Profits have remained strong only because companies are cutting costs.

“That’s how you know that employment isn’t growing.” Rick Kaplan, chief investment officer at Houston-based Legacy Asset Management, told me. Case in point: Bank of America said this week it’s planning to cut 16,000 jobs by year’s end, speeding up cost-cutting efforts as revenue slides. It joins a list of more than 20 other major employers — which in the Houston area includes Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments and United Airlines — that announced large layoffs this year.

It’s not likely that the iPhone 5 will be able to give the market as much of a jolt as the Fed did last week — heck, it doesn’t even have Google Maps — but the bigger question is whether Apple’s success continues to feed the delusion of a stock market that rises amid continued signs of a weakening economy.